DUNLAP — The Dunlap Community Unit District 323 School Board listened Monday to a revised plan to close next year's $2.1 million budget deficit.

The new plan restores some programs cut in an original proposal presented at a Jan. 15 meeting — most prominently fourth-grade orchestra and fifth grade band — but still results in laying off up to 17 teachers and reducing programs.

Also, the new plan initiates an annual $100 activity fee for students in grades four through 12. The fee is set at $100 a year, regardless of the number of activities in which the student participates.

The revised plan got little traction from members of the School Board; less from the crowd of several hundred who gathered in the commons at Ridgeview Elementary School, most of them teachers.

"Good work has been done here (with the revised plan). We've seen great things brought back," said board member Dawn Bozemen. "But we need more time to look for other things (to change). I'd ask the board for more time."

Her remarks drew the evening's first round of applause. Board President Amy Fairfield Doering was the only other board member to address the proposal directly.

Another special meeting has been posted for next Monday to discuss the budget deficit remedy, but Fairfield Doering couldn't say for sure if it would be held.

The board has a hard deadline of late March or early April to inform the teachers who are to be laid off — known as a reduction in force notice — but an earlier, more ill-defined deadline than that to actually identify those teachers and keep the process moving forward.

A group of teachers, led by union co-president John Allison, addressed the board after it finished its tentative discussion on the plan to close the deficit. They urged the board to look elsewhere for measures to close the gap.

"We are strongly opposed to any elimination or reduction of programs which result in the layoff of teachers and in turn negatively affects the education our students, your children, receive," Allison said.

He urged the board to look at using the money from its cash reserve of more than $20 million.

"Reserves are often called rainy day funds, and right now we are in the middle of a thunderstorm," he said. "Use reserve funds to invest in the future of our students, your children. When you invest in programs, instead of eliminating them, you invest in the education of the whole child."

Afterward, Allison said he thought the administration could find a deficit-reducing plan that did not include teacher layoffs.

"I really think we can save all the jobs," he said.

Superintendent Jay Marino said 85 percent of the education budget was made up of teacher salaries and benefits and some of the reductions had to come out of those categories.

Page 2 of 2 - Was it realistic to think there's a plan that would eliminate the need for staff reductions?